


Smoke Without Fire

by RecessiveJean



Category: The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy
Genre: 18th Century Christmas House Party Shenanigans, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Male-Female Friendship, Misunderstandings, Needlessly complicated schemes and plots, Spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 09:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13051674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecessiveJean/pseuds/RecessiveJean
Summary: Destroy,was the assignment,by any means necessary.What luck that Blakeney's wife and friend gave him the means to do just that.





	Smoke Without Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/gifts).



The day before the Blakeney Christmas party dawned seasonably cold and uncommonly clear. The weather that week had been unusually fine in this way, which had provoked no less a person than the Prince of Wales himself to say wasn’t that just like Percy Blakeney: ill-content to order the best-fitted waistcoats around, he even ordered the weather cut to suit him.

Sir Percy Blakeney, if he had been present to hear this good natured little gibe, would almost certainly have laughed as heartily as any man present, for he was famously good-humoured in that way. But toiling as he was in parts abroad, engaged in labours far more dangerous even than petitioning the fickle gods for their favour in all matters climatic, he was unaware that such jests were being made at his expense.

Lady Blakeney was also unaware, concerted as her efforts were on arranging matters for the party itself. The guest list was more than its usual length, owing to the particulars of the season. People from the village all around had been invited to enjoy the great fires on the lawn, and gifts of clothing and hampers of food would be parcelled off to each of these, in addition to the more decadent celebrations habitually enjoyed by peers of the realm.

You would have thought that a lady thus occupied would have no time for callers, but on this day a lone man on horseback was making all haste to her door, sparing his mount only as generously as Christian mercy would permit in the face of an urgent errand.

“Hello, Frank!” he called, on pulling up before the door and spying Sir Percy’s valet about to break conference with a stable hand. “Is your master at home?”

Frank, who was a perfectly correct manservant in almost every respect, knew that Sir Andrew Ffoulkes was one of a handful who were to be admitted to Blakeney Manor under almost any extremity of circumstance. And indeed, he had been admitted under some very curious circumstances indeed. Her ladyship’s preparations for this party hardly rated as an inconvenience next to certain other conditions Frank could have recalled, were he not so specifically, handsomely compensated to forget.

“His lordship, I fear, is yet abroad, but my lady is at home.”

“Excellent,” said Sir Andrew, flinging his reins to the stable hand and dismounting with all speed. “I shall take breakfast while you break the news to her that I am about to disarrange the order of her household not inconsiderably. No, no,” as Frank made ready to escort him down the hall, “not the dining room, man, have some compassion on the poor maids, what? I’ll just go into the kitchen and try not to break anything. That’ll be the way to do it, I think.”

So Frank was spared the necessity of finding an available maid in a household whose entire staff was taxed to capacity with the labours of arranging a party for as broad a swath of social classes as England itself could offer in that day and age. Unburdened of this responsibility, he hastened up the staircase in search of her ladyship, in order to announce that Sir Andrew Ffoulkes was here to call, and had invited himself to breakfast.

~*~

Lady Marguerite Blakeney was, at that Christmas, in the generous bloom of her late youth. Not entirely all that a mature woman would be, she was nevertheless nearer thirty than twenty, and some of the sharp restlessness that was characteristic of her in her late girlhood had given way to something calmer and altogether quite pleasant to behold. She was engaged in weighty discussion with her head housekeeper and no fewer than five maids of all levels of training when Frank found her at last, and, clearing his throat as only Frank could, stood perfectly correct inside the door.

“My lady, Sir Andrew Ffoulkes.”

“What,” said Marguerite, charming in candour, “here? In my chamber?”

Frank was not so superhuman as to fail to blanch at the suggestion of such impropriety.

“Good G—that is, no, madam. He has gone in search of repast.”

“Oh well that’s quite all right, isn’t it?” Marguerite decided. “Will he stay on until the party?”

“Sir Andrew did not confide in me, my lady. However I should hazard, from the state of his horse and some remarks he made on his way into the house, that he particularly desires an audience with yourself or my master, and has been at some pains to seek it out as quickly as possible.”

“Goodness, then I shan’t keep him a moment,” said Marguerite, and dismissed all six of her attendants before making her own way down to the kitchen, where Sir Andrew had just reached the happy conclusion of a very large breakfast.

The cook, in blatant awe of the man’s powers of digestion, stood well clear of the carnage with the kitchen cat clutched protectively to her bosom.

“Lady Blakeney!” Sir Andrew rose in greeting, his face alight with that renewal of strength and vigour unique to a young man who has just eaten a small child’s weight in boiled eggs and rashers of bacon. “How glad I am to have found you at home. Do you expect Sir Percy back today?”

“I expected Sir Percy back yesterday,” said Lady Blakeney, “but . . . well, we know what Sir Percy is when he’s at work.”

And the two traded smiles that sparkled with a secret shared, and a common fondness for the man who had not yet returned.

“Then in his absence I must share some news with you and hope that you will not begrudge me precious time even today, though I know from my wife what complex arrangements must even now be fully underway.”

“Yes,” Marguerite said thoughtfully, and indicated that he should follow her from the kitchen, “Suzanne promised she would be my first guest and arrive sometime midmorning. When Frank said you were here, my first thought was that you had come as escort to Suzanne, but I glean now that there must be some other purpose in your arrival.”

“I am afraid you have the perfect truth of it,” Sir Andrew sighed, falling obediently into step behind her. “Now I must ask that you take me somewhere we can be secret, for what I have to share is not for any other’s ears.”

~*~

Sir Percy Blakeney kept, beside his private apartments, a small study of great suitability for all manner of private business. It was to this chamber that Marguerite directed the husband of her friend, and the friend of her husband, and bade him be as at ease as his urgency would permit.

“For I see that the journey you have made took its toll not only on your horse,” she said gently, and Sir Andrew confessed it was so.

“Not for anything could I spare a moment’s haste. I had hoped Sir Percy might be safely returned, but I see it is not so, and the urgency of my communication is therefore all the more.”

“Then pray speak no more of your urgency, but only its cause,” Marguerite instructed, and Sir Andrew was prompt to obey.

“I come from the coast at Dover, where not one day ago a boat from France set aground. Though machinations of that League of which we both know I am a member, we laid wit to intelligence which told us these sailors were in truth most capable spies, trained particularly for the purpose of entering English society and fostering suspicion and dissent at the highest levels. We believe it is hoped that in this manner, England’s sympathy for the refugees from France might be diminished, and they should be less likely to find favour here. They, and also those who would risk their lives to save them.”

He paused here, gauging the weight and impact of this news as it registered on the face of Lady Blakeney, whose own husband was the sole commander of that same League.

Marguerite, to her considerable credit, evinced not even fear or true worry at this news, never mind the threat of collapse. Sir Andrew, having more than once seen her on its verge, knew well what signs to look for and found none of them present. Emboldened, he plunged on.

“We were successful in making capture of nearly all their number. But some small number, we think one or two at most, made good their escape. It is of course our most devout hope that even these should be laid by the heels before another day has passed. Yet . . .”

Here, now, was the tricky part, and he trusted very much in Marguerite’s good sense and greater maturity to bear up beneath this next news.

“Several of the men we captured held in their possession some documents of instruction which, no doubt, they were not in sufficient haste to destroy. The instructions varied somewhat from man to man, but amongst nearly all there was one commonality, and I am afraid that it is . . . shall I say our own commonality, as well.”

“I take it,” said Marguerite, with some echoes of the wit that had made her salon famous throughout all of Europe in years long past, “that you do not refer to your wife.”

Sir Andrew spared her a smile, and promised it was not so. “Suzanne, indeed, bears no part in any of this. And I think you will find my great relief at that most fitting in a devoted husband. Instead it is your own husband, Lady Blakeney, whose name was repeated on each set of documents recovered. Not his second name, ‘tis true; not the name by which he is known throughout all of France and England, that clever little sobriquet which you and I both know Robespierre delights to despise. But we found repeated his own given name and title, which I fear may mean far greater danger for him and for us all, though you know ‘tis you alone among our number whom we would ask to step back from such peril. The rest of us are sworn to him, even unto death.”

“Faith, man,” retorted Marguerite, “’twas an uncommon quaint ceremony you must have had in wedding your wife, if she did not, as I did, foreswear herself unto her bridegroom wholly, forsaking all others, even unto death. And there you see I’ve the whip hand of you, for I swore myself thusly even before any of your number joined his band, and I flatter myself that this gives me a kind of seniority, though you have leave to laugh to hear it.”

Sir Andrew denied even a wish to do so, let alone intent.

“I could not laugh at the fervour of any who have sworn themselves to my friend. But I do think Percy might dispute the nature and purpose of your vow in this instance.”

“Then we shall leave it to him to dispute, when he should get here. Anything else would be presumption. And where is my husband today? He is overdue by as much time as has passed since these men first set ashore, and what had caused me irritation when I woke is now, since your news, causing me some . . .” She faltered over her choice of words. “Concern.”

“Yes, and I would have spared you this if it were in my power, but I think it needful that all should be on watch. As I say, some of these men—we think two at most—have temporarily evaded efforts at capture. I am confident it shall not long be so, but until that time as they are in our custody, I should ask that all be wary, yourself and Percy included.”

Marguerite nodded her comprehension. This was all quite sensible and, she felt, according to what Percy’s own wishes would be, if he were only present to make them known.

But as to the reason he was not . . .

“Sir Andrew,” she said, with quite studied an air of nonchalance, “you do not suppose . . . that is, you did say my husband’s name was known to most, mayhap even all of these men. You don’t imagine, I trust, that . . .”

Sir Andrew was prompt and passionate in his denial.

“No indeed, my lady, I cannot think such a thing. Whatever training these men might boast of is certainly nothing next to the wit and ingenuity and, pardon me, physical prowess of my friend.”

“I am very glad to hear it. Now pray make ready use of whatever rooms in this house can avail you such rest and reparation as you require after your journey, and tarry with me as long as you are able. In the absence of my husband,” and here a pronounced twinkle lit those merry blue eyes, “I shall need a man of some taste to advise me on any number of subjects. So you see,” she patted his broad hand mischievously with her own small one, “you have double the need of sleep, at least.”

And such was Sir Andrew’s fatigue that he could not even finish his roar of laughter before it was split in two by a monstrous yawn. At this Marguerite took real pity on the man, and departed the study so that he could stretch his length out in a severe, dark armchair stationed there, and drop off into a dreamless sleep.

~*~

While Sir Andrew slept away what remained of the morning, Marguerite bent her every effort to readying her home for the party at hand, and paying as little mind as possible to the shadowy threat that now loomed over all of them. It was surely, as Sir Andrew himself had vouchsafed, preposterous to imagine that some French lacquey of Robespierre—or, more likely, their avowed enemy Chauvelin, who held Sir Percy in a contempt which was unique in its ferocity and single-minded hatred—could ever get the best of her husband.

At least—her hand faltered in the arrangement of some holly berries—her husband in his prime. Suppose Sir Percy, like Sir Andrew, had bent his every effort to reach the Manor at the earliest hour. Suppose in his fatigue he had been rendered slower, duller, and less ready to meet an enemy than was his usual state?

Marguerite, one of those on whom her maker had bestowed more than the average powers of intellect, had also been overgifted with imagination. It was no trouble at all to picture the scene as she imagined it might play out, her husband, weary, labouring along the road after last winter’s light to reach their home and his place by the hearth, only to be struck down, unsuspecting, by one who lay in wait . . .

She suppressed a terrible shudder at the mental image of that lovely, long-limbed frame sprawled, helpless, in the dirt of the road. No, it could never be so. She would not dishonour him by thinking such things. And with a steady resolve, but rather less certain hand, she returned to her own task and had nearly seen it finished when again came news of a caller.

This one, at least, was expected. Suzanne Ffoulkes had, at Marguerite’s own urging, come one day early to share the joy of the season.

She had also brought her mother the Comtesse de Tournay who had, alas, very little memory of the joy of any season, and made no bones about her chilliness in greeting Marguerite.

“Of course,” she said, “I could not permit that my daughter make such a journey alone. What her husband was thinking of, to provide no escort, I cannot imagine.”

“By the grace of God and the good state of our road, Madame le Comtesse need not trouble to imagine,” Marguerite rejoined quite cheerfully. “Sir Andrew Ffoulkes even now sleeps off the trials of his travel, and will no doubt, when he wakes, furnish as complete an explanation of his motives as his energy will allow.”

Whatever the Comtesse de Tournay had expected, it was clearly not this. She was so thoroughly undone by surprise as to stare, openly, at her daughter’s hostess.

“What, my son-in-law . . . here?” Then, as if the state were one she had not even known Sir Andrew could inhabit, “ _asleep_?”

An instant later calm betook her features.

“Ah but of course, I forget he is a close friend of your husband. He is here on business, perhaps, or a social call. Men will have their own way of doing these things, I suppose, and it will do us little good to divine their reasoning, such as it might be.”

Simply for the sake of little Suzanne, who was even now drooping a little beneath the rich brown fur and warm, garnet-coloured velvet of her winter hood, Marguerite was tempted to permit the assumption to stand. However she knew it could not possibly stand for long, and she doubted that Suzanne’s comfort could be in any meaningful way assured simply by postponing the truth, and so she laid it before them as she escorted both women into the grand front hall of Blakeney Manor.

“My husband, as it happens, is delayed abroad. I cannot name with any certainty the hour of his return. Sir Andrew came in search of him, and alas, I was bound to disappoint him.”

Comtesse de Tournay’s lips thinned to a knife’s edge width.

“I trust you did,” she said. Of such acidity was her tone, Marguerite half-fancied the bright red berries that adorned the balustrade nearest them risked pickling by proximity.

“Please,” she said, “take this opportunity to rest a while in your rooms, and join me only as you feel able. Travel at this time of year is so taxing, I find, and surely,” with a bracing optimism that was less truthful than anything she had said yet that day, “everyone can be improved by . . . sleep.”

If the Comtesse detected in this airy statement any wish to be rid of her, she did not remark on it, so Marguerite concluded that she had detected no such thing. The older lady was seen to her chamber first, which allowed the two former school friends the luxury of a private chat en route to the little apartment set aside for the exclusive use of Suzanne.

“I am sorry about Maman,” Suzanne said candidly, “only Papa went to town and she said she refused to be left alone in the house, so she came to haunt mine. Oh!” sighing, ashamed, “what a terrible thought to speak of my mother. But it’s Christmas, after all, and I couldn’t simply leave her.

“I’d thought to suggest she visit a friend in these parts, except it seems the lady de Courcy has taken ill, or her husband has, or one of the children . . . actually, the message was terribly garbled, and the valet seemed very put out so maybe they’re all ill, or else they’ve taken to the brandy a little more liberally than good taste would permit. In any event they wouldn’t have her so I couldn’t leave her there, and we came on the next quarter mile together . . . oh darling, I am sorry, do forgive me! It’s just awful of me, isn’t it, to bring you a guest who hates you.”

“I should rather bear it for your sake than see you play the hostess to her so far away from me,” Marguerite assured her. “At least you will have your husband here to distract you.”

“More kindness if I were to offer his company as a distraction for you,” Suzanne laughed. “You absolutely must keep him with you at all times; Maman cannot bear to be uncivil in front of Andrew. I think I will charge him to serve as your shadow and your shield until Sir Percy returns. By the bye,” she paused in the act of opening the door to her room, “where _is_ Sir Percy, Margot?”

Marguerite shook her head.

“Who even can say . . . put him on a yacht and I do vow my husband loses what earthly sense God gave him, to say nothing of any sense of time.”

“You should give him a watch for Christmas,” Suzanne suggested. “Then he might know when his own party starts, at least.”

“What a fine idea, little one,” said Marguerite. She dropped a fond kiss on the dark curls that sprang up from her friend’s forehead. “Go in now, and take your rest. I’ve plenty of work to distract me here, and your husband to champion me against your Maman should the worst transpire, and she wake before you.”

“Dear Marguerite,” Suzanne laughed, “oh I am so glad we came. What a lovely Christmas it’s going to be!” And, with a cheery kiss of her own blown off the palm of her little hand, she disappeared into the room beyond and the rest that awaited her there.

~*~

No rest was yet to be found for Marguerite, who carried on her preparations for the party even in the prolonged absence of her husband. Her guests slept off the weariness of travel as she moved through the house, aglow with purpose and brisk in her desire to forget that strange threat that had begun to take shape at Sir Andrew’s terrible words.

Sir Percy, she comforted herself, was only late through some carelessness of his own or, more likely, some reasonable complication that had arisen due to his work with the League. Not the first time such a thing had happened, and ‘twas only a fearful coincidence now that Sir Andrew had come to lend some menace to what otherwise would have been nothing more than an inconvenient delay.

Yet for all Marguerite’s efforts to reassure herself on this point, her relief at seeing her husband mount the grand oak staircase shortly past midday was such that she could not decide whether to fly to him or collapse at his feet, and so she compromised by standing perfectly still, caught in a rigid paralysis of indecision.

“What, m’dear,” said Percy, in that dear, infuriating drawl of his, “no pretty salutation for your husband? Was I not gone long enough to miss?”

“Indeed you were gone longer than I cared to miss you,” Marguerite sallied tartly, and cast a significant glance at the handsome Ormolu clock which stood in proud state on a high table near the top of the stairs. “Or did you forget that you gave me your solemn word to return yesterday not two hours past this time?”

“Couldn’t have been my solemn word,” Percy protested, “for I never break my solemn word. I think it must only have been my word of middling gaiety, or at very most, a laughing-up-my-sleeve kind of word. If it had been my solemn word, then ‘pon the very same, I’d have been standing here before you two dozen hours ago.”

“Percy you beast,” Marguerite said helplessly, “don’t you know I thought you were dead?”

For she had, despite her denial, feared the very same, and only his presence before her now, tall, broad, perfect in form and fitness was proof enough against her fears to dare speak them aloud.

“Now that seems a bit melodramatic, even for a lady who began her career on the stage,” Percy frowned, and Marguerite found she could bear the distance no longer, so she flung herself across the space that lay between them, fully into his arms.

“Faith, you French women,” Percy said huskily, after an almost indecent interlude had followed, “wanton emotions up to your eyebrows, what?”

“Forgive my impertinence,” Marguerite entreated, between gasps for breath, “but I must point out the wanton emotion was not entirely on my own side.”

“No indeed, my dear, you have the right of me there,” Percy decided, and set her, quite gently, on her feet again. “Forgive me, I’ve become very Continental in my travels. But there,” thoughtfully, in belated reflection, “what do you mean, you thought I was dead? Whatever put such a notion into your head?”

So Marguerite slipped her little hand through the crook of his arm and walked with him back to his room, explaining the whole way about Sir Andrew’s arrival and the news he had brought which, coupled with Percy’s absence, had given her such unreasoning fear.

Percy, now perfectly understanding the cause of her heightened emotion, shut the door of his chamber behind them and was very tender in his apologies thereafter, and rather less tender in his other attentions, of which both extremes in demonstration Marguerite found no cause to complain.

“That explains it, though,” he said thoughtfully. It was some time following their reunion, and Frank was dressing him in fine, fresh clothes that did not smell of road and human toil. “Damndest thing—oh, eh, your pardon, m’dear,” nodding absently to Marguerite’s reflection in the glass. “But some bold fellow set on me just as I was coming out of a public house. He asked if I was Blakeney, and of course I thought he’d a message for me, so I said I was, and let me have it. Poor choice of words that was, for he really gave it his best effort.” Percy craned his neck and flinched as if at the memory. “I am loathe to confess he got the drop on me like that, but I’m afraid it’s no use lying to your wife, what, Frank? Wives always find out, in the end.” And he gave Marguerite a much warmer smile in the mirror, which she returned in kind.

“I am glad it was not so serious as I feared, though I don’t like his boldness in confronting you that way.”

“Not a terribly clever spy, trying that on,” Percy agreed. “Eh, you can run along now, Frank. I’ll let you know if the cravat gets the better of me.”

So Frank ran along, and Marguerite waited patiently while Percy put the finishing touches on his own toilette. In Frank’s absence, and in the reassuring embrace of one of his better-cut waistcoats, some solemnity of manner stole over her husband.

“Ffoulkes considered this a credible threat, you say?”

“He was quite convinced we should all be on our guard against whatever might be planned.”

“I take it, then, that he thinks they have something more in mind than fisticuffs in the stableyard.”

“I cannot imagine him in such an agitation of mind if that were the worst he feared.”

“Just so,” Percy agreed. He flicked the waterfall of his magnificent cravat in high satisfaction at its completion. “Well then, my dear, I think we had better see what we can do to rouse friend Ffoulkes and have it out of him, in some detail, exactly what he thinks we should be on our guard against. For I’ve little enough fancy to let something get the drop on me once, alone, and no interest at all,” his eyes stole over to meet hers in the glass once more, even as a new edge hardened his tone, “in it getting the best of you.”

Marguerite, the very image of sanguinity now that she knew he was here and alive and more than ready to answer whatever threat was made against them, simply took him by the arm and steered him gently one room over to the study, where Sir Andrew Ffoulkes was only just waking up.

~*~

Sir Andrew laid the matter bare before Sir Percy with rather less hesitation than he had done for Lady Blakeney. Marguerite, who got to hear the second version, decided she was grateful that she’d initially only heard the first. Sir Andrew was much more frank in his assessment of the risks run by letting the lone remaining spy—if indeed there were such a fellow, as nobody was entirely sure of the number, and the number captured to date were not interested in talking—stay at large.

“He’s had a day’s lead on us,” Sir Andrew said unhappily, “and I don’t like to think what that could mean. The lay of the land can be got with very little effort, if a fellow speaks the lingo and knows how not to draw attention to himself. He may already be well on his way to the other side of the country by now, of course, and if that’s the case, good luck to any of us in catching him now.”

“Certainly it’s possible,” Percy agreed, “but I think it unlikely. They all had possession of my name, you say? Second to any individual instructions issued, what all of them, to a man, had in common was me.”

“Yes, that’s so. The other instructions varied a bit—meet this one here, talk to that one there, see what this lot thinks about such and such, make sure you leave them thinking what we want them to—but when it came to you, it was simply your name and . . .” Sir Andrew hesitated, cast an appealing look at Marguerite and, seeing she meant to remain, sighed and finished, “destroy, by any means necessary.”

“A most thorough and concise instruction all at once,” Sir Percy said thoughtfully. “In a very non-specific sort of way. Good thing we’re all safely shut up in our house and not anticipating half the country to turn up tomorrow morning.”

“God help us, the party,” Sir Andrew muttered. “Yes, it would be the very thing, wouldn’t it? I doubt they would have come with that in mind, but if one of these fellows managed to ferret it out, I don’t see how he could pass up a chance like that. You’d never see him coming.”

“Not ordinarily,” Percy agreed, “but I think your own cunning in turning up this plot may have given us the good fortune of a sporting chance. How many of us are expected to attend tomorrow?”

Sir Andrew gave a helpless shrug, so the number was supplied by Marguerite.

“Eight,” she said, and named them.

“That’ll do to be going on with,” Percy decided. “Though if you think any others are within a day’s ride, Ffoulkes, I charge you now to raise them. Don’t like to raise a panic or anything of that sort, but I also don’t find it suits me to take that sort of risk as close to home as all this.”

And Sir Andrew gave his heartiest agreement to that.

At what stage of the planning Marguerite slipped from the room, neither man could say for sure. She was certainly there for the conversation about what points on the grounds would bear closest watch, and she may or may not have been there when they started to talk about the great bonfires as a possible point of strategy, but by the time they got to the odds that the food would be safe to eat, she was definitely gone.

Only in her absence did Sir Andrew drop his guard and look at his friend in real concern.

“Do you think . . . that is to say, I suppose it’s quite safe for everyone to be here tomorrow.”

Sir Percy did not laugh off the suggestion of danger, nor did he deride his good friend as a coward, for of course he was not so petty and in any event had been through enough tight spots with Ffoulkes by that point that the very idea of cowardice on Sir Andrew’s part was the only thing really worth laughing at in the first place. Instead he studied the collection of lists and maps they’d sketched up between them, and a grim intensity blazed beneath the heavy lids of his eyes.

“Let us only say,” he said at last, “that I devoutly hope so.”

Sir Andrew thanked him for his honesty, if not his optimism, and together the two friends redoubled their scheming for whatever the next day might bring.

~*~

What the next day brought, alas, was the Comtesse de Tournay, thoroughly rested up for whatever unpleasantness she cared to visit on any who crossed her path. As a result Sir Andrew was nominated at the person most frequently to cross her path, since he did, as Suzanne had said, seem proof against the sharpest part of the old woman’s temper.

If Sir Andrew minded being used in this fashion, he was far too much the English gentleman to ever let on. Instead he danced attendance on his mother in law with such assiduity, Percy was overheard to confide in Marguerite that he appreciated her good sense in being orphaned before he ever met her.

Marguerite was too buoyed at the completion of all her preparations to even pretend to take offence. All lay in readiness for the party that would begin shortly before midday and last long into the night. Even her sleep the previous night, with the comfort of knowing Percy was home safe at last, had been deep and undisturbed.

Now the first guests from the village were beginning to arrive, and the staff appointed to welcome and feed them moved out to do their work. A pleasant abundance of good, hot food and drink was provided, and Marguerite and Suzanne made a very happy morning of wandering among the first who had arrived to partake of it.

The sour note came too soon, though, when Sir Andrew, who had just begun to make his latest address to the Comtesse, suddenly reared back as if stung. It was testament to his great self-control that he was able to refrain from making any truly offensive remark, but the one he did make was curt enough to carry his point as clearly as if he had been as vulgar as instinct might have demanded.

His face a study in dark fury, Sir Andrew crossed the lawn to stand beside his wife. Suzanne looked up in concern.

“Whatever is the matter?”

“Your—” Sir Andrew began, then reined himself in with visible effort. “Forgive me, my dear, it’s hardly worth dignifying by the very repetition of it. But would you consent to walk with me a little while, please?”

So Suzanne allowed him to steer her away from Marguerite, who watched them go with considerable bemusement.

She had no opportunity to tell Percy about the event in any capacity, because it was shortly thereafter that some of the guests began to arrive from farther afield, rattling up the drive in fine carriages and coaches, the ladies and men alike tucked in safe and snug with thick robes as proof against the chill. Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney naturally went to greet these newcomers, and were so taken up with the task that it seemed quite an ordinary occurrence when the members of the League arrived, coming as many did with their own wives and assorted other adult family members.

It was a fashionable but informal affair on the whole, which was, everybody agreed, very like the Blakeneys, to be so completely ahead of the curve that they had circled around altogether and seemed to be almost behind.

“Charming,” Lord Hastings assured Marguerite, enjoying his punch with all the enthusiasm of a much younger boy. “Why it’s just like every Christmas I remember.”

“Only do us the courtesy of making sure you don’t indulge to the point that turns into one of the ones you forget,” Sir Percy advised. “Now, Hastings, have you a moment to spare? I want a word.”

“Of course,” said Lord Hastings, and his features took on a new, watchful cast. “At once.” And the pair retired to the study, leaving Marguerite to welcome another guest.

The manor and the surrounding property filled up steadily throughout the day, so that no less a personage than the Prince of Wales had considerable difficulty in getting his carriage up the drive, flooded as it was with the population of the entire county, who had finished their first meal and were starting on the second.

By the time the Prince had reached the front steps, Percy had been found and summoned to his wife’s side. They made a handsome pair, by all accounts that remain to us of that day, and the Prince was heard to wish them both a very Happy Christmas as he accepted their bows and told them he didn’t care what he sat on so long as they had arranged for a meal worth sitting down for.

This comment, of course, was inspired by the odd collection of furniture provided for those dining on the lawn: everything from rough-made wooden stools to small, square bales of hay carted out from the stables had been provided, but Marguerite assured him neither of these would be offered him, except that he requested it particularly.

It was all very much exactly as it should have been, on almost every level, but Marguerite could not explain away a current of unease that still reached out to her. Through the smoke and the crowds on the lawn, and through the thick perfume and sour notes of alcohol that hung heavy in the air inside her home, she was conscious of something looming. Ephemeral for now, but not, she was convinced, content to stay that way.

“Sir Andrew,” she fretted, seeking him out by the foot of the staircase and laying a plaintive hand on his arm, “Sir Andrew, you may laugh at me if you wish, but something is very wrong here, only I cannot make out what.”

Sir Andrew, who had stiffened perceptibly at her touch, now looked at her in something like consternation. At last he nodded, and invited her to precede him up the stairs and into the privacy of Sir Percy’s study.

Once inside the welcome recess, which reminded Marguerite in so many particulars of her husband, she turned to face his friend with every appearance of deep anguish.

“You may laugh at me,” she repeated. “I would welcome it, even, if only that it would show me a good man whose judgement is sound thinks my fears are baseless. But something here is very wrong, and I cannot for the life of me work out what it is.”

Sir Andrew, rather than laugh at her, bowed his head in full agreement.

“I am not altogether easy in my mind, either. I myself am in the grip of . . . your pardon, I do not like to call it intuition, but I think it is an unconscious recognition of something that’s not quite right. I first discerned it this morning, when Suzanne’s mother made a most ludicrous and unprovoked accusation about my—my honour. And,” the poor man went a deep, berry red about the ears, “your own.”

“What?” Marguerite said, and laughed. “Why the very nerve of her, and under my own roof!”

“Yes, it shocked me as well, though I am afraid I have never been under any misapprehension about her regard of you. Even so, the accusation was . . . bold. I fear I was equally bold in my rebuff of her suggestion, but now I think there is something to this apprehension of yours, and I am not convinced it does not have some connection to the rumour.”

“Rumour?” Marguerite frowned. “Sir Andrew, distasteful as the accusation may be, I would hardly dignify it by suggesting it has spread any farther than one bitter old woman.”

“With your ladyship’s pardon,” said Sir Andrew, now distinctly miserable, “I must beg to contradict you, for I am very much afraid that it has.”

~*~

The rumour, it soon proved, had spread considerably beyond the Comtesse de Tournay, and in fact seemed to have reached almost everyone at the party that day, including Sir Percy himself, whom apparently none had dared to approach in gentle warning save the Prince of Wales, who had pulled him aside and spoken in such well-meaning but insultingly frank terms that, to quote Blakeney himself, “if he hadn’t been a Prince I’d have popped him on the nose. Very serious accusation to make against any man’s wife. Raises all sorts of demmed awkward questions, you know, about . . . well, lines of succession, and all that.”

“No need to trouble ourselves on that point at present,” Marguerite assured him. “But yes, this is distressing, and I will confess I am at a loss as to how it began. Do we,” she appealed with charming naïveté to the others present, “really give such an impression?”

Lady Ffoulkes and Sir Percy consulted one another without in fact exchanging anything like a spoken word.

“It could only appear in such a manner to people who did not know you as we do,” Suzanne explained, once the silent conference had been concluded. “Of course I know very well how Andrew is with me, and how different it is to how he is with you, and I am positive that Sir Percy has similar understanding of you, Margot.”

“Yes, m’dear, you’re terribly English around him,” Percy agreed, with studied vagueness. “I don’t see you go at all French these days unless . . . well.” And he made a friendly little gesture that invited Sir Andrew and his wife to understand him without actually obliging him to resort to vulgarity.

Suzanne covered a smile with her hand, and Marguerite found she could still smile, too. Even so . . .

“It must have started somewhere,” she said. “Suzanne, will you please do me the favour of asking your mother where she got the idea?”

Suzanne gave her friend a smile that seemed to express gratitude for not actually suggesting her mother had begun the rumour in the first place, and went away at once to find her. In her absence, the remaining three traded more solemn glances of understanding.

“It’s got to be the last one,” Sir Andrew said heavily. “The spy we missed. Can’t think for the life of me how he found out about the party when he was only in the country a day, but this whole thing couldn’t have spread without somebody fanning the flames.”

“Exactly,” Marguerite put in. “It’s too perfectly spread amongst all parties. It got around too fast, too coherently, for it not to have been the craft of somebody working to relay it to as many as possible at one time.”

Percy looked from his wife to his friend, then back again, with an air of innocent mischief.

“Beg pardon, I’m sure, but are you two going to let the third fellow get a word in edgewise, or are you planning to run away together with even the conversation now, too?”

“Oh, Percy!” Marguerite said, and it was equal parts laugh, sob and reproach. “I don’t know how you can even joke about something so awful. As if I would ever.”

“No, no, I am quite aware,” Percy said gently. “But don’t you see, my dear, it’s exactly the ridiculousness of it that makes it worth laughing at? Why, nobody who knows either of you like I do could think it was anything but a great joke.”

“It’s going to be an awful mess to clean up, though,” Marguerite reflected. “Why, everybody here seems to believe it’s true. I don’t care so much for my own sake, only as you say, it does sometimes make for awkwardness.”

“And I,” said Percy, losing a trace of humour at long last, “would gladly pass off years of awkward issue and queries after my begats and all the rest, except that they come at cost to your own reputation. And that,” all humour was now quite vanished, “I cannot abide.”

“It’s why he did it, of course,” Sir Andrew guessed. “Destroy by any means necessary. Death is only one sort of means. Somebody must have told them before they left several of the means by which they could accomplish it, and don’t you see? He very nearly did.”

“Nearly,” Percy agreed, “but not quite. And it’s the nearly that will be the undoing of him, though he doesn’t know it yet.”

A satisfied gleam lit his eyes.

“I think it’s time we had everyone gather on the lawn, don’t you, Ffoulkes? As my wife would no doubt have put it, at another time in her life, the final scene of this little comedy is about to play out.”

~*~

The gathering on the lawn felt very natural, at first. There was a merry festivity to the whole thing, the children from the village frisking between the towering bonfires, their parents well fed and their lords and ladies equally well-fed and more than a little well-toasted into the bargain. The sated, boozy contentment that had crept over them all felt very right, somehow; very _Christmas_.

But the snake that crept among them did not, and Percy made a very studied performance of looking a bit deep in his cups himself, all the while scanning the crowd to ensure that the eight attendant members of the League, as well as a few of the longest-employed members of his own household and grounds staff, had positioned themselves at such points that escape would be a proper challenge, even to the most capable of enemy agents.

Sir Andrew, by necessity, stood quite close to the front and Suzanne very near beside him. On her other side was her mother, who had not been made mellow by the application of fine brandy, but had neither been made any the worse.

Marguerite, standing directly to her husband’s left, supposed she could hope for no more than that.

“Forgive the formality of all this,” Percy said amiably, to the assembled crowd. “We hoped to thank you for doing us the courtesy of your company. And of course I would be loathe to put any kind of damper on the night,” he went on, inspecting his sherry glass as if it were somehow to blame for his need to do so, “but I’m afraid I really must protest, you know . . . terrible common thing to talk about, but I feel it’s maybe better to actually talk about it, all friends together, than let you go on talking about it amongst yourselves. Eh?” And he put his quizzing glass to his eye, as if trying to register the reaction of the crowd.

It was plain, Marguerite saw, who knew already what he was speaking of. Not many of the villagers reacted, which was to be expected. The spy was not interested in targeting them, at least not yet. They might have come in useful later on, if bad feeling could be sown, but tonight the target had been Percy Blakeney’s wife—or at least, the reputation of his wife. And to demolish that, the rumour had been directed at the upper echelons of society, every one of them lined up for his convenience and just drunk enough to be thoroughly deceived.

“If we ever have this party again,” she murmured to her husband, “we will invite only the village.”

Percy covered his low chortle of laughter with a longer, lazier peal of the same.

“Yes, yes, I know it’s unspeakably vulgar of me to bring it up, and I do beg your pardon, but it’s been quite the devil of a night for my wife here, and, eh, Ffoulkes, you’ve had a night of it too, what?”

Sir Andrew, scarlet to the roots of his hair, nodded in pained assent. Suzanne patted his arm in fond reassurance. Her mother, on the other side of her, looked as if the last drink had disagreed on the way down.

“Yes, and Ffoulkes is a good man, you all can vouch, I think,” Percy said absently, nodding at the crowd. “Don’t like to think what that means you’d say for my wife, I guess, but the point here, I think, is that somebody’s been a little less than forthright with all of you and it’s caused no end of embarrassment to some friends of mine . . . eh . . . wife of mine . . . you know. People of some importance to me, one way or another.”

He drifted off a moment, studying his cup as if he had dropped the rest of his speech within it. In reality he was watching his League members, each of them scenting through the crowd, looking for the one, whoever he was, who did not belong.

“What I mean to say,” Percy went on, after a long pause, “is that if any of you could kindly identify the fellow who put all this talk in motion . . . that is, if you could say which of you it was, I’d be no end of grateful to you, and I’m sure Lady Ffoulkes, there, would also be uncommonly glad. Nasty thing, rumours.” He was twirling the drink in his glass now, letting it catch the light, splashing the refracted image of the bonfires out over the crowd. “Only cure for rumours, or so they do say, is to get them right out in the open. Rotten things are killed by sunlight, don’t you know.”

And he laughed, loudly, at this wit of his own making.

Marguerite could not laugh. Not now. Not with it all pressing close, that same feeling of wrongness rearing its head again, like something watching, waiting, looking for just the right moment to strike . . .

It did not come as the blow of a snake’s head. It came instead as the Comtesse de Tournay, her voice amplified by drink and indignation, as she blurted out,

“Why Suzanne, look over there and tell me if that isn’t the de Courcys’ carriage? Only imagine, they were all that time pretending to be sick when they only didn’t wish to receive me!”

Marguerite could not have faulted the de Courcys their taste, were that so. But with all their attention diverted to the carriage, a number of things seemed to shift and click cleanly into place.

“Percy!” cried Marguerite, but Percy had already reached the very same conclusion, and turned, sharply, to Frank, who was the watcher nearest at hand.

“Who came in that coach, Frank?” he challenged, _sotto voce_ , and Frank looked for his answer from one of the grooms, who in turn cast about for a minute, and lit on a dark-haired man of medium build standing very near the front.

“That’d be him, your lordship!” he sang out, and such was the nature of a good, honest country voice that it was very like the sun itself had come out for a minute, as the source of the rumour was laid bare.

“Yes!” said the Comtesse, with some surprise. “Why, that’s him! He said that Sir Andrew was madly in love with Lady Blakeney and had only married my daughter for what he imagined she might inherit. He said it was very common knowledge, in this part of the world.”

The close attention of even one person is uncomfortable for a spy, but the rabid curiosity of an entire country house party seemed to make the man shrink within his own clothes.

“I have no idea,” he said faintly, “what that woman is babbling about. She’s drunk.”

“Her ladyship may be that,” Percy agreed with cheerful readiness that inflamed the already high colour of the Comtesse, to the point that Suzanne murmured perhaps her mother had better take a seat, “but no matter how drunk she is, that won’t make your coat fit you any better than it does now. I don’t suppose it really is your coat, though, is it? I only mention it because sink me if it doesn’t look very like the one I saw old deCourcy wearing in town last month, until I put it in his ear that nobody wore the things cut so low in the front these days. A good man, de Courcy, and very ready to take a bit of fashion advice when it’s offered.”

Something dark and dangerous flashed for a moment in Percy’s face, then, as he finished, on an ominous note, “I do hope, for your sake, that when we send some fellows ‘round to his house we find he’s in reasonable decent health. On my word, I can’t begin to imagine what you might have done to oblige the whole family to stay away while you made such ready use of their coats and carriages and all the rest.”

This seemed to be the tipping point in the mood of the crowd, and the part of the crowd nearest the man it was tipping against just happened to be Sir Andrew Ffoulkes.

He reached, with great satisfaction, to catch the man firmly in his fists, but before this could be accomplished the fellow danced back and sideways, and wrapped both arms very firmly around Suzanne Ffoulkes just as she rose from seeing her mother safely seated on a bale of hay.

A shriek and sudden stillness went out from that part of the lawn.

Sir Andrew stood motionless, hanging in perfect obedience to the threat now levied against him. Suzanne, her eyes standing out wide and dark in the pale circle of her face, seemed to lack the courage even to struggle. But then, this was easily understood, given the glint of a knife that flashed in the spy’s hand before he pressed it close to her side.

“I think,” he said, “you had better not.”

Every inch of Sir Andrew’s frame might have been cut from marble, so perfect was his agreement that no, he’d really better not. Suzanne, obedient to the prick of the knife through the fabric of her cloak and winter dress, was obliged to move backward with her captor, through the crowd that parted for them as we are told the seas obeyed the will of the Prophet, if the Prophet had used a knife and frightened girl, rather than the will of God Almighty.

It was a far more commonplace force that stayed their retreat: the will and wit of Frank the valet, who was still standing just off to one side, came to bear on the problem in full force as he unwound his own cravat and looped this, with deadly speed, around the wrist of the hand that held the knife. A sharp wrench jerked the weapon clear of Suzanne’s side, and another quick wrench, this one performed on the arm of the girl herself, soon had her standing clear of any threat. After that the spy was readily subdued and bound most capably by the cravats of several present, who did not mind denigrating fashion in the name of justice.

Suzanne collapsed willingly in the embrace of her husband, and the Prince of Wales, spurred into action by the sight of so much decisiveness on the part of so many, made hasty arrangements with his guard that the man should be taken directly back to town where he would be made to answer for his presence in England.

Another group was sent away at once to investigate the health of the de Courcy family, and altogether the whole party dispersed very neatly soon after, some in their carriages, some on foot, and some to the rooms that Lady Blakeney’s staff had made ready for their use.

It would be unseemly to describe in any detail the expressions of relief and gratitude that were then exchanged between Sir Andrew and Lady Ffoulkes, and Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney. You need only be assured that these were extensive, energetic, and wholly appropriate to the triumphant mood of that evening and that general spirit of coming-togetherness which is associated with the season.

Marguerite did express some concern that the rumour might persist beyond the night, but her husband said he really didn’t see how it could.

“Why not?” Marguerite worried, and Sir Percy, gently and not at all unkindly, laughed.

“My dear. Only imagine it: Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, passionately in love with my wife over and above his own? A wild fantasy, which the teller of tales himself disproved on the lawn when he betrayed that the only prayer he had of keeping that most splendid figure of a man from pounding him into the turf was the one life in the world he holds dearer than his own.”

He leaned in at that moment, so she could see the spark of passion that he guarded so carefully from all save her, and her heart leaped in gladness at the sight.

“And well,” he vowed, “do I know how he feels.”

There was no more talking between them after that.

~*~

The last event of that night actually took place early the next day. Sir Percy Blakeney, breakfasted and excellently dressed before any other had stirred, took himself out onto the lawn of the great manor house and studied the smoke that curled up, sluggish and sulky, from the remnants of the bonfire.

He seemed almost to be waiting for something, and his patience was at last rewarded when a low snap, like the pop of a pistol or the crack of a dry winter twig, sounded from the wood to his left.

“I had thought you might come back for it. Your initials, aren’t they?” He tossed a knife, taken from the grip of a French spy, lightly from one hand to the other. “Shouldn’t think it was recommended to do much engraving if you made your work in espionage, but then, I’m told I’m a simple fellow, and perhaps the nuance of the thing is lost on me, what?”

No answer was forthcoming, but Sir Percy was undaunted.

“I am glad you came back. I don’t think I will give you the knife—my man took it off yours quite fairly—but all the same I did hope to congratulate you on your most preposterously recognisable handiwork . . . for ‘twas your own scheme, was it not, my dear Chaumbertin?”

For a moment there was again no reply. Then, distantly, from a more remote spot in the wood, came a muffled oath in the French language. Sir Percy smiled broadly.

“Altogether too complicated, you know. Gave you away at once. Loops and twists and turns and so many ways it could all fall apart with just the slightest twitch of the fingers. Why you can’t put half as much effort into the respectable art of tying a proper cravat as you do into these convoluted schemes of yours. . . ah, well. Life’s little mysteries are often more amusing when left unsolved.”

And he smiled fondly at the empty lawn.

“You’d have set the man at the inn on me, I suppose? Paid him to do it, in the hope that it might buy your fellow more time to get into his position. You were Ffoulkes’ second man from the boat, of course. Stands to reason he didn’t know for sure how many of you there were; you’ve a particular talent for failing to come up to scratch even in a head count.”

He tossed the knife again to punctuate the insult, then caught it, blade out, flashing in the morning sun. It was dwarfed by the breadth of his palm, a tool rendered toylike by the sheer size of the man who grasped it. He smiled, inane, affable, and somehow at the same time absolutely the last man anyone of wit or sense would dare trifle with.

“You’ve at least an hour to reach the coast before we can manage to be after you. Had a devil of a lot to drink last night, some of those fellows. Wouldn’t like to rush ‘em out of bed.”

He paused, considering the scene, remembering Lady Blakeney’s tension of the previous night, and some of the good humour left his voice as he gave his parting shot.

“I don’t advise you come back this way any time soon. I think you’ll find my Christmas charity comes in much shorter supply when you tax it on behalf of my wife.”

He tweaked the fall of lace at his throat, and smiled broadly into the sunrise. It promised to be a beautiful morning in the English countryside, and Sir Percy Blakeney was rather looking forward to it.

“Happy Christmas, though, what?”

And the lord of Blakeney Manor ambled back inside to greet his guests.

**Author's Note:**

> Your prompts were absolutely perfect and I had far too much fun imagining what this odd little working friendship might look like to those on the outside looking in.
> 
> Happy Yuletide!


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